She Loves Her Little Children
by MrsTater
Summary: As Daenerys adjusts to her new role as mother to the former slaves of Yunkai, Jorah takes stock of what the situation means for him.


**A/N: To celebrate the upcoming third season premiere of _Game of Thrones_, a missing moment set between Daenerys IV and Daenerys V in _A Storm of Swords._****The title of the piece comes from "The Song of the Seven," a Westerosi hymn by George R.R. Martin.****Many thanks to erolyn2 for beta reading. And in case you missed it, we've teamed up to write a WIP, _A Winter's Journey_-check out her author profile for dragons, Dothraki, and she-bears, oh my!**

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**In the Name of the Mother**

Daenerys was reclining on cushions when Jorah ducked beneath the door flap of her tent. The dragons curled up behind her asleep, and her eyelids, he saw, drooped drowsily too. Yet the violet shone in the same ethereal manner they had as she rode her little silver mare through the conquered streets of Yunkai, allowing the newly freed men, women, and children upon whose broken backs the city had been built to touch her.

_Mhysa_.

Their cries still rang in his head as they had through the walls of yellow bricks. Like the supplication of worshipers beseeching the Mother.

"Have my children been fed?" she asked, pushing up on her elbow so that she did not have to crane her neck to look him in the eye from his height.

"Aye. The lines are long, but slowly the people receive their bread. They are most grateful." Jorah watched her closely as, apparently satisfied by his answer, she started to lie down again, lifting a goblet of wine from the woven mat on the ground before her. "I would ask your grace if…"

"If what?" She smiled at him expectantly, encouraging him to say his piece, yet Jorah hesitated to do so precisely because of that smile. The joy on her face was such as too seldom graced her lovely young face; the last time he could recall her looking so was after she ate the stallion's heart and won the love of her husband's _khalasar_. Dampening her spirits was the last thing he wanted, and he inevitably would, because she would not like what he had to say.

But say it, he must. Clearing his throat, he began, "If you mean to take these with us, Daenerys, as you did the slaves of Astapor-"

"Freedmen," she corrected him. Her eyebrows sloped, though the smile did not falter much, her joy running too deep. "And yes, of course I mean to take them with us, any who should desire it."

"They all do," Jorah went on, "and they are mouths on legs, the lot of them. We will never be able to feed them, as well as your army. Not for long. And you have your sellswords to pay now."

Though his own mouth twisted at the mention of the Stormcrows-or rather at their leader, Daario Naharis-Daenerys' smile still did not fall. The lines at the corners of her mouth deepened, however, evidence that her patience was beginning to wear thin, and her voice pitched higher in frustration.

"What would you have me do, Jorah? You heard them call me _mhysa. _They are my children. It is only natural that children look to their mother for their bread."

"So do your eight thousand Unsullied-and your _khalasar_. It has not been so long that you can have forgotten what it was to languish in the Red Waste with your Dothraki and your freedmen of Lhazar."

"Do you think I could ever forget my sweet handmaid Doreah wasting away in my arms?" Daenerys spat. Her eyes burned bright, and behind her Drogon lifted his head from the pile of sleeping dragons, thin puffs of steam swirling from his nostrils.

"Forgive me, your grace-"

"They depend on me," she repeated, her voice tremulous, with sadness or barely constrained rage, Jorah could not say. In either case, he had gone too far to hold back now.

"And _you_ depend on me for candor and counsel." He dug his heels into the tent floor, bracing for the inevitable heat of her anger, which lately he seemed to incur more often than not.

It did not come, however. With a sigh, Daenerys curled once more upon her cushion; a moment later, Drogon lowered his head too, though one golden slit remained open, watchful.

"Of course I do. And you have advised me so faithfully, even when I wished not to hear." She studied him for a moment from her pillow, brows pulling together in scrutiny. "But not tirelessly. You have never completed one task but that you are already at work on the next. We are alike in this."

Her smile showed itself again-a little-and Jorah returned it.

"Have _you _been fed, my good knight?" When he shook his head, she extended her hand to him, which he took. "Then sit with me. Share my repast."

Jorah had not realized how footsore and bone tired he was until the slight tug of Daenerys' hand on his made his knees buckle and he all but dropped onto the floor facing her. She did not have to invite him a second time to tuck into the simple but refreshing meal of olives and herbed tomatoes, and he gulped down a goblet of wine Irri poured him so quickly that she looked a little amused to be called upon to replenish it so soon.

"It must seem strange to you," said Daenerys as they ate, "that I care for such as these."

"Nay." Jorah wiped a drip of oil from his chin on his sleeve. "I would expect no less from you, after watching you order Khal Drogo's _kos_ to cease their brutality against the Lhazareen women."

_You have a gentle heart_, he'd told her then; he did not now, yet Daenerys seemed to read his thoughts.

"My gentle heart did not serve me well with regard to Mirri Maz Duur," she said heavily, her gaze dropping to her cup. "Even so, if what she said is true, I will have no children but these who now name me Mhysa. And the dragons I suckled at my breasts," she added, looking up at him again, a hint of a playful smile upon her lips.

Was it never having known her own mother that made her collect lost souls to herself and bestow that maternal love upon them? There was no justice in the world if she was not to bring forth children from her own womb. Daenerys Targaryen was all that a lady mother should be.

_She did bear a child,_ his own heart whispered treacherously. _A son I killed. A son I _sold_. _

"I would not put any stock in the words of a vengeful witch," he said. He hoped to sound encouraging, but the bile of guilt choked them in his throat and instead the words only came out gruff.

"At least I know what it is to feel as though I have given birth to a living babe. I am exhausted, Jorah. But so very happy."

She truly looked it, Jorah thought as she leaned back on her cushions, the lines of her face sharp and shadowed with the many sleepless nights that led to today's victory, yet her skin aglow with a mysterious inner light that only she could entirely comprehend. He was glad she did not seem to remember Rhaego's horrific birth or the fevered days that followed which he had passed in helpless anguish outside her tent and relived even now in his nightmares.

"You're right, of course," Daenerys' voice drew his attention. "I do not have the resources to feed them." She admitted to the truth frankly, but it hardly reassured Jorah, for the truth hardly seemed to trouble her. With a little shrug of her shoulders that made the bells jingle at the end of her braid, she said, "As they have faith in me, I shall have to have faith that the Mother will provide for all our needs."

_That _was not expected, and Jorah tilted her head as if considering her from a new angle. "I never knew you to keep faith in any gods."

"I'm not certain I do. But I _am _certain that I need all the help I can get. If any god is likely to show me benevolence, I think it would be the Mother."

Again, Jorah thought about Queen Rhaella, who died giving her life. Strangely, though, instead of a slight silver-haired older version of Daenerys, the woman he imagined was taller, broader, with curling dark hair, who held a stocky boy on her lap as she read to him of brave knights and fair ladies. His own mother, recalled in perfect clarity where sometimes conjuring her face required so much effort that he feared he had forgotten it forever.

"When I think how you came to me, Jorah," Daenerys said, "that also gives me pause to consider."

"To consider what?"

Now she was the one who tilted her head, contemplating him with her wide eyes, as though surprised. "Have you never considered that it was the crime of slaving which sent you into exile? Now here you stand, the Lord Commander of my Queensguard, leading my army to set free the slaves of Essos. Does it not seem to you as though it might all have been arranged? Mayhaps by the hands of the gods?"

"If it is, they have a strange sense of irony."

Jorah raised his goblet to his mouth, but to his dismay only a little wine remained. He gulped it down and nodded at Irri when she nonverbally asked if he wanted more. He drank again, but rather than feeling steadied by it, the troubling questions Daenerys posed only seemed to become more dizzying.

"Is the honor of my House the cost of these people's freedom? What about the suffering of the men I sold…of their wives and their children…" _And _my_ wife_.

If that was the cost, he did not think he would have paid it. He _knew_ he would not.

"I said I was not certain."

Daenerys glanced away, her cheeks reddening so that Jorah wished he had not reacted so strongly to her words. She did not remain daunted for long, though, swinging her gaze back to his, that light shining in her eyes once more.

"But what if those men you sold were in Astapor when we liberated it? In Yunkai? What if they yet wear shackles in Meereen?"Before Jorah could ask whether she meant to make war on Meereen, she asked, "What if my conquest is your absolution?"

If Jorah could be absolved of a crime, it would be the most heinous one of betraying her. For a heartbeat he considered confessing to her what he had done, pleading with her to consider his loyalty to her, his love of her, asking whether the measure of all that he had given, all that he would continue to give, outweighed what he had done before he knew what she was, or who she was.

But as every other time he thought he might come clean, in the end he decided the risk was too great. He had sworn her a vow, and would not be parted from her. Atonement could be achieved quietly, if at all.

"Mayhaps. If you believe it is, that is enough for me," he told her. "But even if it were not, Daenerys-still I would serve you, still I would obey you. If you ask me to die for these you call your children, I will. Because you asked it of me."

She smiled at him, and was so beautiful that he thought if he ever found use for any god, his would be the Mother, too.

Her likeness would be cast in Daenerys' image.


End file.
